Quick beach trip - Part 1

So normally we don't "do" the beach until the end of the summer when Mark is through with summer ball and football stuff, but basically I got an email deal too good to pass up. We went to The Beach club in Gulf shores (Fort Morgan, really) for 4 nights right when school got out this year and it was great - the water was clear and pretty calm, and it was super uncrowded (don't think that's a word, but whatever... its summer). We really enjoyed the condo and the girls are getting much more used to the water - braver such that we don't have to spend most of our time at the pool and Mark and I get more beach time. Katie was especially great at going out in the water with her new boogie board:

Daddy and his girls:





Katie with her new boogie board (... following after her Mama's footsteps, she got burned the first day, hence the t-shirt the rest of the trip!):




Daddy with some relaxing beach time:

Emma enjoying the sand:

... oh yes, and I was actually there too (... not too many pics of mom in her swim suit, being the photographer of the family - whew!)

My little penny pinchers

Okay, so my children have some how managed to obtain (I don't say inherit b/c knowing myself, that couldn't be possible) the ability to save money. This all started when Katie was begging for an iTouch that I refused to buy. So I told her (tongue in cheek) that she could save for one, which originally I had no intention of letting her do. I wanted her to get a netbook and I was going to pay half - for strictly selfish reasons - I wanted a net book! Anyway, when Mark and I got grants from school to get new laptops, I decided she could buy what she wanted, so today we went to Best Buy and Target to get the girls "prizes".

Emma took her $30 and bought a Jesse doll; doesn't it look great with Katie's old Halloween costume:

And here is Katie with her brand new iTouch (which makes me want to break down and get the iPhone, as I am surely the only one in the free world without internet access on her phone and who takes 10 minutes to send a text message) In all honesty, I never thought she would do it, but she saved $150 and I had told her I would pay the rest! Crazy, huh?

The reason she is dressed like a boy is b/c that is her "musical theater" costume for the dance recital. Its called "Newsies" and they are dressed like old fashioned news boys. They all have different pants and shirts and such; its actually quite cute!

City girl garden

Okay, so I've got a lot to post since we went on a quick beach trip, so check back daily b/c I have several things to add about our eventful lives! Well, being the biology teacher that I am, I am trying to teach my children to appreciate where some of our food comes from... okay really, I bought the plant so they would stop whinning at Home Depot when we were buying paint for Emma's room. Anyway, we have actually had some luck with our little tomato plant (did I mention neither of my girls like tomatoes?)

Here's the beginning of our bounty:

Here is our first tomato:

Here are the girls with the produce they would never think to consume:

And here is the plant with some more "baby" tomatoes growing on it:

Katie wants to make salsa with them, but I don't know if we will quite get enough for that!

Emma's preschool graduation party

So today Emma had a very informal preschool graduation party at "the jumping place" in town. They played for a while:




Then Ms. Patrice gave everyone a diploma and a "special" award. Emma's award was the "Hardest worker" award! (Go girl!)





... is she doing the pageant stand in this picture, or what?:




This is her preschool class, including her best buddy, Ada , with the blond hair in the pink:




... and here she is with Mama after the awards having some pizza (since mama is never in any of the pictures - notice my sassy summer hair cut!):

Northside 3rd grade honor program

Katie had her honor's program today at Northside. We were very pround of her b/c she ended up with all A's and one B (in science of all things!) Here she is with her teacher, Mrs. Millet getting her A, B honor roll certificate:



She also got the Most Improved award in Math, which is great, b/c sometimes she struggles with that. (We've got some work to do this summer on times tables!):




We were most surprised when she got the "Certificado de Excelencia" in Spanish! Katie loves Spanish, and did really well this year.




Here is the proud dad with his "baby girl":



... and her is Katie with Senora Gonzales, her Spanish teacher.

Mark and I noticed that the DSHS (and DSFH) teachers/ coaches kids really racked up today. There must be something about teachers kids!

Wrapping up school... yeah!

No pictures this week, but the Carroll's are wrapping up the end of another school year and couldn't be happier. Mark, sadly, is done with baseball (sad for him.... for the rest of us... well, honestly, its nice having Dad around again). His good friend Kyle at Catholic, did win the state title, though - so congrats to you Kyle (and my alma mater... kind of).

Mark and I have exams this week at school, and our students check out after exams, so the week goes really fast. Katie has her awards program Monday after lunch. I have a haircut Tuesday and Emma has a preschool "graduation" of sorts Wednesday - Busy until the bitter end! Dancing is still going strong with Katie dancing 2 nights a week and Emma just one. Emma wants to do some gymnastics this summer also.

And then Saturday.... YEAH, THE CARROLLS HIT THE BEACH

This is actually last year's trip, but you get the idea, just picture Katie taller!

We are heading down to Gulf Shores, really Fort Morgan, to The Beach Club. It looks like an amazing place with a restaurant, coffee shop and stores. We got a terrific deal going before Memorial Day. We are all looking forward to a great trip after a rather long and tedious school year.

After the beach trip we hit the ground running, again. Mark will start summer ball with baseball and football lifting and 7 on 7 in football too. The girls will have swim lessons and dancing for most of the summer. Katie is going to do a science camp at LSU too. Mark and I have a few workshops for school, but nothing too time consuming.

My next post should have some pics from this week, like of the awards / graduation stuff, so check back later this week before we head to the beach! Yeah summer!

Mother's day Livingston Parish style!

I'll get to the Livingston Parish "style" in just a minute. For mother's day, Dad and the girls took Mama to Longhorn steak house here in Denham to eat. We had a great meal (and a lovely new Margarita flavor too, I must add! ) Here are the girls and I before we left:



Here we are outside the restaurant:




.... and here's the Livingston Parish part, a nice family photo in front of Bass Pro! I know this picture is horrible of us, but I was trying to get a nice Christmas photo to send my big city friends of what we do here in "the parish". No... really, literally we went to Bass Pro and "walked around" after dinner. This is actually what my children WANTED to do after we ate. It gets better too. I don't have a photo of this, but my two sweet little princess type girls came home with fish pillows as big as Emma. I haven't gotten a picture of them yet, but they are literally as big as Emma.


... did I also mention that when I went to the post office the other day to buy stamps, there were some men mailing CHICKENS in the Post office? Well, actually they were roosters b/c they were cock a dooodle dooing! The best part was watching all of the new people coming in and hearing the first chicken. Everyone thought it was a cell phone.

... only in the LP!

Our little runaway!

Just a few pictures of what's going on at the Carroll house:

This is the funniest; Caesar Milan (aka the dog whisperer) says that when you have a cat and a dog in a household, the cat has to be the alpha pet. Well, our house is doing something right b/c Lilo sure is the alpha "dog" so to speak. Jovi digs these little holes right by the garage and Lilo loves to sit and roll around in them. I tried to get a picture of her belly side up, but this was all I could get. She loves them. (Poor Jovi, just wants to play with her so bad!)




More pictures for dancing. Even though Katie has a goofy smile here, their outfits looked great together. This is Katie's other tap outfit for her Friday night class. These are the outfits that will be in the program. (did I say I "wasn't going to pay for that 'darn' ad this year? Sorry, just can't see those sweet little faces desperately looking through the program on recital night and theirs not be there - even if it does mean we won't be able to eat next week, right?)



So... here is our excitement for the weekend. Sunday, I fussed Emma pretty hard b/c she has started taking things of Katie's and drawing in them (like her art pads and diaries and such)... well she took a scrapbook of Katie's and taped some pictures in it and Katie was... well, not very happy. Anyway, so after I fussed her, she went in her room, packed a suitcase with clothes, toothbrush, hair brush and so on, and proceeded to tell me that she wanted to live somewhere else. Well this went on most of the day, and she finally left out of the house to go to Mr. Norman's next door, so I sneeked (sp?) these pictures from the window and then through the hole in our fence.

After I took the picture above, she proceeded to walk right into Norman's house without knocking and ask him if she could live there. (thank goodness he was dressed!) anyway, he told her that he would have to check with Ms. Phyllis.

Later that night when we were going to bed, she decided she would stay with us, but maybe leave another day! (Whew!)